BOOKS.
NAUTICAL LANGUAGE.*
THE friends of the working-man, while bristling with anxiety to vindicate his political claims, have been less eager to register his titles to intellectual honours. And yet the language, and through language the literature, of every nation, is indebted to the working- man for a characteristic and vigorous element. That admirable structure which we call the English language was not made useful and beautiful without the labours of the forge, the farm, and the workshop. Were our language to be deprived of the wealth which it owes to the brawny arm of the blacksmith, the stout toil of the farmer, and the cunning craft of the mechanic, the effective periods of oratory and the brilliancy of poetry would be seriously muti- lated and marred. For the language of men exercising a specific trade is soon transferred to the general uses of society, and becomes an historical expression for the progress of a nation in the way of commercial and industrial activity. The phrase- ology of trades contains their history, and the story of a single word is often the history of some particular branch of industry. And among the various classes of working-men the national language, and accordingly the national literature, like the national prosperity, are eminently indebted to those who follow the sea. In the common circumstances and emotions of daily life an Englishman has a predilection for expressing himself in sea idioms. In doubt he is "at sea," in alarms he is "taken aback," in a dispute he may chance to "fall foul" of his neighbour, in an ebullition of pride he may be "brought to his bearings," in easy circumstances it is "plane sailing," in misfortune or sickness he becomes " a wreck," while, if he is in luck he may secure "a good berth." "Even our Parliamentary orators," as Admiral Smyth puts it in a preface, distinguished by a quaintly rough but appro- priate style, "with a proper national bias, talk of swamping a measure, danger ahead, taking the wind out of an antagonist's sails, drifting into war, steering a bill through the shoals of oppo- sition or throwing it overboard, following in the wake of a leader, trimming to the breeze, tiding a question over the session, opinions above or below the gangway, and the like, so rife of late in St. Stephen's ; even when a member rats on seeing that the pumps cannot keep his party from falling to leeward, he is but imitating the vermin that quit a sinking ship." And the idioms which so happily illustrate the occurrences of domestic and public life are employed with equal force in the most exalted regions of prose and poetry ; there are perhaps no passages in the Bible which strike so home to the English heart as those in which the highest concerns are illustrated by metaphors taken from the ocean. The language of a maritime people is naturally made up to a great extent of the language of mariners, as the language of a nation must always
* The Sailor's Word-Book: an Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms. By the late Admiral W. II. Smyth. Revised for the press ,hy Vice-Admiral Sir E. Belcher. London: Blackie and Son. 1867.
be controlled by the principal interests of the community, and it has certainly been fortunate for England, in this respect, that her interests have been associated with the healthy and active pursuits of a sailor's life. An American when asked the colour of a horse which he had been loudly praising, replied, "Well, he's just exactly the colour of a twenty-dollar gold piece." No doubt that splendid coin was his highest standard of beauty. A worthy American dame, too, concluded her commendations of a young man's character by remarking that he was "as clean as a bran new twenty-five cent piece." The French devote serious attention to the adornment of the person and the delicacies of the table, and they have produced a language delicate and brilliant in an admirable degree. They must pardon us if we sometimes per- ceive about their language too mach taste of sweetmeats and a smell of pomatum. They may tell us, perhaps, that our language smells of tar. It is, at all events, more healthy.
-But independently of its bearing on the national conversation and literature, the language of the British seaman may be expected before long to throw much additional light upon the naval history of the country and of the world. The early mysteries of the naval art, though obscure, are, we may hope, not impenetrable ; but the field of study is large, and the labourers are few. The first mari- ners, a people whose boats were provided with but scanty appli- ances, and who were unable to venture beyond the neighbouring ports of their own coasts, can have had no need of an extensive vocabulary of terms ; but it must have assumed different propor- tions with the improvement of naval architecture, and when the horizon of a voyage could be extended into unknown worlds. At present the naval history of the Middle Ages is buried in obscurity, and before we can hope to obtain any satis- factory knowledge of the subject, the literature of that dark period will have to be ransacked for all the naval terms and sea idioms which it contains, and the correct definition of these will have to be ascertained by the most reliable methods. This will be a long and of necessity a weary task, for along the barren shore which will have to be traversed the collector cannot expect to pick up more than here and there a rare shell or precious stone. But the result will be a satisfactory one if it enables us to do justice to an adven- turous and historically ill requited body of men, and confirms the conjecture—for at present it is only a conjecture—that the Navy of the time of the Crusades, which sent its ships from the Adriatic to the Black Sea and the shores of Egypt, and from the Gulf of Genoa to Flanders, and which brought wealth, and power, and glory to Amalfi, Naples, Genoa, Venice, Marseilles, Barcelona, and Constan- tinople, must have been supported by no contemptible resources, and that the vessels which sailed out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, explored the coasts of Western Africa, doubled the Cape, and guided their adventurous prows towards India must have been manned by a better class than mere ignorant and reckless sailors. It was in order to give this conjecture the corroborative testimony of etymological facts that M. Jal undertook his polyglot nautical glossary, a work which gives token throughout of conscientious industry, but must be consulted with discretion. We are glad to take this opportunity of calling attention to it, because the subject, though eminently of national importance, does not seem to have attracted much enthusiasm in England. If we may take the library of the British Museum in -some measure as a criterion, we are compelled to believe that it is almost entirely overlooked. For the volu- minous catalogue of that institution includes few of the works essential to even a general study of the subject. It is astonishing that the national library should neither contain Captain John Smith's Seaman's Grammar (1653), nor Sir Henry Manwa3rring's Seaman's Dictionary (1644 and 1667). An equally important desideratum is Roding's Allgemeines Worterbuch der Marine, while the works of Lescallier, Twent, Willaumez, Stratico, Lantsheer, Neumann, Boteler, Blanekley, and many others are either feebly represented or entirely wanting. And yet the subject, either from an historical or from a purely philological point of view, is one of ample and varied interest. Our naval relations with Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Russia offer an interesting page of history to the student of the literature and traditions of the North, while the rivalries of Carthage and Rome, Venice and Genoa, Marseilles and Barcelona, the conflicts of ancient Greece and the Byzantine Empire, and the adventures of the Naval Knights of Malta and Rhodes furnish sources of abundant interest to those who turn their attention towards the naval history of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The philological interest of the subject has been so eloquently announced by M. Jal, that we are confident the reader will be glad to have a summary of the subject as nearly as possible in his own words. He says :-- "The- study of the nantie vocabulary of a people is, to a certain extent, the study of its maritime relations, and the comparative philo- logy of sea terms is, therefore, a most interesting feature in the history of nations who have one foot on the sea. Considered under this aspect, the language of the sea deserves a careful examination of its forms, its modifications, and its genius. Perhaps the reader may be astonished to hear us talk of the genius of a language apparently so strange and bar- barous as-that usually in the months of seamen. But this language has a genius of its own, and we may say this with the more authority, since in every quarter of the globe, although its words are different, it has the same figures, the same energy, the same conciseness, and the same eclat. It is everywhere lively, vigorous, and highly coloured ; it is everywhere definite and exact, and, at the same time, brilliant and poetic. The habit of braving the same dangers, watching the same imposing spectacles, and giving life and movement to analogous machinery, has inspired the sailors of all nations with the same figures. We find among the Malays expressions which might have been translated from the ancient Greek. This may seem incredible, but it is true, and, we may add, natural. Poetry is one, and its expression cannot greatly vary."
The difficulty of tracing naval terms to their etymological souree LAS, it will easily be conceived, been greatly increased by the way in which they have been mutilated in the mouths of ignorant and uneducated men. Take, for instance, the French word " lusin."
It is a corruption of the English word "housing," or "house- line," a small line formed of three fine strands, used for various
purposes. Le housing has become "main," just as il otio has become loisir. Or again, " brigand " was originally the name of a soldier who wore a particular kind of armour. These brigands were a lawless set of fellows, and the name, having fallen into disrepute, came to be applied to the pirates of the Mediterranean, who employed small swift vessels, with a light draught of water. These were then called brigantines, and hence, by corruption, came the name, "brig." In Webster's Dictionary the term " lug- sail " seems to be connected with the verb "lug," from the Anglo - Saxon lyccan ; but the analogy of the French term for this sail, voile de fortune, or simply fortune, seems to suggest its connection with the word luck, from the Icelandic lukka. This seems to us far more reason- able than to suppose the French term to have been the result of a misunderstanding. It is generally taken for granted that bowsprit is a name derived from its being attached to the bow of a vessel, but it is well to remember that in Sir Henry Man- wayring's Dictionary it is spelt " boltsprit," and by Captain John Smith " boulspret," so that this origin of the word can scarcely have suggested itself to the minds of the earliest authorities on the subject. Again, in Webster's Dictionary, which derives additional authority from its etymological assertions having been submitted to Mr. Whitney, of Yale College, " berth " is referred to "birth," from "bear." The word is not noticed by M. Jal, but surely it must have some connection with the French word " berceau," a cradle. In fact, the subject is full of undeveloped etymological interest. The sailor, for instance, puts his cable (Arabic habl, from habd) round the capstan (Latin, cabestrare, capistrum), and heaves on it in good old English fashion (Anglo-Saxon, hebban, hefan). What, by the bye, is the origin of the word " canines" or " carlings," which has been received into so many languages ; or of " garnet " We have extended our view of the subject a good way beyond the horizon of Admiral Smyth's book, the range of his work being confined to the first period of linguistic studies—the compilation and definition of verbal facts. Although what he has done leaves a good deal to be done, it gives evidence of creditable industry and of all the hearty zeal . which an Englishman looks for from a tried and meritorious sailor. Besides the strict technicalities of
naval nomenclature, the gallant Admiral has not neglected the social side of sea life, and we think he has done well to include in his dictionary some slang terms peculiar to the cabin and the caboose. Some of these terms, however, like many of the technical designations, are not defined with very satisfactory clearness. So excellent an authority might have shed a fuller light upon the nature of "Davy Jones," and who was that unlucky Jackson who, "after feeding for a week in the bread-room, could not escape through the scuttle," thus giving rise to the phrase, "Jammed in a clinch like Jackson ?" Surely, too, there mast be some more hopeful explanation of the term " dog-watches " than Hood's conjecture that they were so called from being "cur-tailed." There is something singularly vague about the Admiral's defini- tion of the word "overwhelm,"—" a comprehensive word derived from the Anglo-Saxon wylm, a wave. Thus the old song- " Lashed to the helm, should seas o'erwhalm." But the arch- lexicographer Dr. Johnson himself was sometimes equivocal in his explanations, as, for instance, when he defined " dragoon " as a sol- dier "who fights indifferently on foot or on horseback." On the other hand some of the explanations of slang terms are quaint and expres- sive. "Lubber," an awkward, unseatuanlike fellow, front a northern word implying a clownish dolt. A boatswain defined them as "fellows fitted with teeth longer than their hair, alluding to their appetites." In the Burnynge of Fault's Church, there is an explanation of a cognate term, "An Abbey lubber,.that was idle, well fed, a long, lewd, lither loiterer, that might work and would not." Of "growlers " the Admiral says, "Smart, but sometimes all-jaw seamen, who have seen some service, but indulge in invec- tives against restrictive regulations, rendering them undesirable men ; there are also too many civil growlers' of the same kid- ney." He is rather hard upon aides-de-camp, and in his definition of them, his grammar, as is frequently the case, is rather loose. "Aide-de-camp, a military staff officer, who carries and circulates the general's orders ; and another class, selected as expert at carving and dancing." In the matter of naval cuisine, Admiral Smyth stands up for that rudely abused person the "sea cook." "Though they are at times libelled as being sent from the infernal regions, they are pretty fair in their way," he says, "and though no great shakes in domestic chemistry, they can enter the lists against any white-aproned artiste at pea soup, beef steak, lobscouse, pillaw, curried shark, twice-laid, or savoury sea-pie."
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